Finding Your Inner Piano

by John Ettorre

There’s just something about a first-born kid.

I don’t know if it’s biological, spiritual, emotional or a combination of all three. I just know I feel especially in tune with my oldest son, Michael.

You see, there’s a kind of rough symmetry about our family: it consists of two parents and two kids. We even have two cars and two televisions, but the streak is broken by cats, of which—alas—we have but one. In terms of similar traits and emotional makeup, my wife and I each got one child. Fifteen-year-old Michael is mine.

While his younger brother Patrick is in many ways a mirror image of his mom—thrifty, patient enough to do large puzzles, and occasionally given to letting off steam with a staccato burst of, well, operatic verbal energy—the older guy is more like me. His room is nearly always messy and his instant messenger correspondence is vast and varied (I use email, though). In social situations, he can be either impossibly extroverted or, less often, coolly reserved, depending on his mood. When he has some unexpected free time, his first impulse is generally to head out the front door and see what’s going on in the world. When it comes to sitting still long enough to do a puzzle, the two of us might last a combined 3.5 seconds before moving on to something else.

But there’s one important way in which we’re different: he got the athletic talent, especially in basketball. And here, he happens to have benefited from his mom’s genes, since as it happens she was the serious schoolyard baller.

So how do I feel about this athletic kid of mine? Look, I won’t waste your time being coy. I’m a male, and that’s more than enough genetic imperative to automatically revel in the athletic success of my male offspring, doubly so for my first-born. While the guru of self-actualization, the late behavioralist Abraham Maslow, wrote about the impulse of the older generation toward "generativity," or selfless mentoring, the realist in me also recognizes an equally strong and more unruly Darwinian programming at work here. There’s a reason, after all, that beer companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on those silly, reductive TV commercials to appeal to our inner caveman/couch potato. They must somehow speak to us post-Cro Magnons on an important visceral level, the same level at which dads of our species are known to become impossibly giddy while watching our boys excel on the field of athletic battle.

Still, when you work your way free of the Freudian fog, there’s no missing the simple joy of watching your child master something so thoroughly that it has long since become their own. Former New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, a famously crusty old cuss of a guy in adulthood, once recalled the sheer bliss he experienced as a young man in discovering his growing mastery over reporting and writing. "God, this is my piano!" he exulted.

I’ll occasionally recall that comment as I watch my Michael glide down the court with the ball, skillfully changing pace and picking up his dribble as he matter-of-factly slices past a defender on the way to the hoop. In the course of many games over many years, I’ve studied his face as he has steadily improved his skills, and his look now suggests a mix of one part easy confidence and another part sublime joy. It’s the kind of look one has when doing something you were meant to do, and which you take great satisfaction in doing.

While he’s a big, strong kid, sports is often at least as much about inner toughness and confidence, which can’t really be taught. As a fourth grader, he had a moment that may well have served as a crucible for his later success.

It came during a holiday tournament in which his team made it to the championship game. The score seesawed back and forth, staying close until the final minute. With seconds left, and his team down by one point, he was fouled.

He stepped to the free throw line with the chance to be either hero or goat. There were perhaps a hundred wildly screaming fans in the stands, but to a kid so young it must have felt like thousands.

But Michael somehow seemed like the only cool one in the house that day. The little guy stepped to the line, focusing only on the basket and the ball, and effortlessly sank both shots.

And then he did something I’ll really never forget.

With the pandemonium of celebrating teammates already beginning to engulf him, he took a second to find his parents in the stands and nod and smile at us before calmly turning his attention to his friends and joining in the fun.

As moments of parental pride go, god, that was my piano.

John Ettorre is a Cleveland-based writer and editor who has also worked in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Over a 20-year career, his writing has appeared in more than 70 publications, including the New York Times. His online weblog, Working With Words, can be found at www.workingwithwords.blogspot.com. To reach John, send e-mail to: jettorre@voyager.net or leave a message at (440) 708-2994.